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On our last day at Wacken d42 and I took a constitutional around the campgrounds and this was absolutely the most elaborate campsite ever. They had a club in there! If you look closely, you’ll see that a good portion of the camp is made up of enormous speakers. Rock on!
Check out an article about our experience at Wacken 2008 and more pics here:
Show date: October 5, 2008
Venue: B.B. King’s Blues Club & Grill
Bands: Obituary, Unleashed
Ralph Santolla of Obituary throwing up the horns
The marquee outside of B. B. King’s stated:
Obituary
Unleashed
I was hoping this would be a fitting description of the show to come. D42 was a little worried when she saw all the guys with denim and leather vests show up. Unleashed was an new band to us, and that kind of gear generally speaks of thrash metal, which is not my favored genre. Unleashed turned out to be a Swedish death metal band. I still thought they sounded more thrash then anything, but if that is what they’re going for, more power to them.
Unleashed are a band of showmen. Their music was good, but the show itself was great. We showed up fashionably late, and Johnny Hedlund (vocals) was already on stage riling up the crowd. Continue reading
Have you ever been to the circus? I mean, back when you were little and could see past the dirty tired animals and the worn out grins on the clowns’ faces. I went. Many years ago. My dad bought me an enormous lollipop which I shared with my sister and which we kept going for almost a week until we woke up to find the treasure covered in ants. I loved going to the circus. I loved the feeling of awe at the heart-stopping tricks of aerial acrobats, and the courage of lion-tamers, and joy at the tricks clowns played on each other, the orderly chaos of it all.
That was when I was a little girl. Well, I finally got to experience all these feelings, and more, all over again in Spiegelworld . Absinthe, this “variety show on acid”, a burlesque and a circus, a surreal trip into a whole other dimension appealed to my adult sensibilities the way the circus charmed me when I was a child.
Beelzy and I rushed to Pier 17, arriving a few minutes before 9:30 just in time to realize the tickets we bought were actually for next week. The ticket clerk straightened everything out for us and we kept on rushing to the lights and sounds of what seemed to be a carnival with a circus tent or two in the center of it all.
Terrible shot, I know
Since relocating to New Jersey in September, I began to experience mild ennui. I’ve taken to coming home from work to flop on the couch and eventually fall asleep in front of People’s Court or a similar attack on my brain cells. Then Beelzy called and told me we’re going to a Weird New Jersey party, part of the newly established Reel New Jersey Film Festival (LINK)
Mark and Mark
You may have read one of the Weird NJ magazines or even saw the offshoot of that project on the history channel: Mark Sceurman and Mark Moran hosting Weird U.S. If this is all new to you, just know that Mark and Mark think of their venture as “your travel guide to New Jersey’s local legends and best kept secrets.” It was once a more underground movement, with secretive trips to abandoned mental institutions and the like, but has become fairly mainstream in the past few years with corresponding events such as this large-scale Midnight Movie party. Continue reading
Tomi Joutsen of Amorphis
Show date: September 29, 2008
Venue: B.B. King’s Blues Club & Grill
Bands: Amorphis, Samael,
Lately my music cravings have been sated exclusively by men from cold harsh climes, generally famed for their inapproachability and cruel mythology. I was understandably excited about Samael and Amorphis joining up to play B.B. King’s on the 29th of September. D42 concurred and accompanied as per usual.
I have a bit of a history with Samael. They played Wacken Open Air 2007 and from the shivering depths of my tent I heard the strains of distortion and glottal fry of Vorph. I couldn’t force myself out that night and when my sudden tentmate woke me up at 3am to tell me how good a show I missed a seed of discontent was planted. Surely, seeing Samael open for Amorphis in a small venue in NY isn’t as awe inspiring an experience as seeing them on a German battleground at 2am with thousands of rabid metalheads, but I still felt a little better. There is a large portion of my music worshipping being dedicated to the industrial sound, which is why I’m still babbling about this Swiss ensemble of black, doom, and above all industrial metal.
Amorphis, hailing from icy Finland, was new to me. I knew in my heart of hearts that I blasphemed by not getting their music earlier, but somehow I just let them slip through my fingers until now. With Tomi Joutsen on vocals they offer not only the death metal screech or growl, but also clean vocals, which admittedly is manna to my ears in the usual discordant mess of music that I subject them to. Continue reading
Show date: August 24th, 2008
Venue: B.B. King’s Blues Club & Grill
Band: Finntroll
Mathias "Vreth" Lillmåns vocaling it up
So the trouble with not waiting a good year or so before returning for a show is that fewer people will make it a prerogative to purchase tickets. The crowd was pretty non-existent for the opener, Lethal Strike and grew only a smidgen for Warbringer. In fact, I had a lingering suspicion that Lethal Strike brought all their friends down. This was only confirmed when three guys started freaking out all over the floor trying to start a mosh pit, and even a circle pit—though that mostly meant that they just chased each other until they got tired.
John Kevill - Warbringer Vocals. I did say ecstatic.
Both Lethal Strike and Warbringer looked ecstatic to be onstage. Although the former is only now recording a demo while the latter put out an album in 2007, both bands were mugging for the crowd and drinking in the energy while being amazing clichés. Things like “We will tear you all down with a… LETHAL STRIKE” were uttered onstage. It was also explained to us that humanity sucks and we will all eventually feed upon ourselves. I assume Warbringer expects a Zombie Holocaust, although none of their lyrics confirmed this. The bands didn’t sound particularly novel, but weren’t bad either.
At 9 both openers were finished and we prepared ourselves for a two-hour set of Finntroll, since that’s what they delivered last time. They finally came out at about 9:45, not really strutting, just sort of wandering out on stage and launched into Kitteldags off of the Jacktens Tid album. The crowd was already kind of worked up due to the three guys mentioned previously who felt that people weren’t giving their all to the pit. My thoughts on this are, you can’t tell me to move, I will move when the music makes me. This time though no amount of music was going to make me do a thing because I recently sprained my ankle and gored my hand and so stayed away from belligerence. Continue reading
Mud People of Wacken
Well, it’s coming. It’s a mighty account of a mighty undertaking in drinking beer and depriving our bodies of bare necessities. There was music too. Much photographic evidence will come into play as well. Worry not, only give us time to put everything together into something coherent.
Dirty Feets of Wacken
